The rapid growth in digital imaging has brought about a number of improvements in the ways that consumers use images that they have obtained. Online imaging utilities, such as those provided by the Kodak EasyShare™ system allow the consumer to upload images for storage in an online gallery. These images can be accessed and used by the consumer and other individuals to whom the consumer has granted permission. Further, images from an online collection can be downloaded for printing or viewing or used, for example, in applications such as screensavers. Also, high-quality reprints, calendars, decorated coffee cups and similar items, mousepads, posters, T-shirts, and numerous other items using consumer's images can be ordered.
Online gallery storage presents a number of new opportunities for retailers. Targeted marketing based on consumers who use online image storage allows a retailer to present products that may have special appeal to an audience. More particularly, this audience has effectively been “pre-screened”, that is, the consumers have already shown interest in an area by their selection and use of specific websites. Approaches to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have the goal of successfully using information profiles on consumers in order to more effectively present to them goods and services they are likely to buy. Advantageously, based on considerable data obtained on a consumer from various activity at one or more internet sites, strategic use of CRM allows the retailer to customize selling approaches to each consumer, presenting information on goods and services that can be specifically tailored to each consumer account.
While CRM methods have been applied to various online merchandising applications, the primary emphasis has been on profiling the consumer and offering product packages that are likely to be of interest based on this profile information. However, semantic understanding of the content of consumer images, or pertaining to the consumer images, has not been used to generate personalized products for the consumer.